Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 2619
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sentative; however, this was also not intended considering the quasi-experimental nature of the study. As the participants from the companies were not familiar with the impact allocation literature and with the process of comparing allocation alternatives with respect to certain criteria, the pairwise comparisons of the alternatives regarding the (sub-)criteria were performed with reference to the scientific literature on allocation issues. This was found to be an appropriate information base for this task, and also made the process more objective and transparent. 5. Conclusions This study provides valuable information about this relevant but rarely studied issue by exploring the practitioners’ perceptions of allocation methods in biorefinery develop- ment. Specifically, we gathered information on the perceptions of Austrian pulp and paper company representatives regarding their choices of appropriate allocation methods. The practical implication of the study findings is that different allocation procedures can be preferred or applied within one company, one biorefinery, one product and even one impact category. Furthermore, the relevance of professional background to allocation related decision-making suggests that environmental managers and other decision-makers (e.g., in firms) should be properly trained on allocation issues and their implications. The versatile combination of capacities, skills and other human factors would enable allocation options to be viewed from multiple perspectives. In this way, more conscious decisions, which are not bound to single manager’s or department’s perceptions, could be formulated. Subramanian et al. [68], for example, emphasized that implementing meaningful decision models that can have positive environmental and economic impact should involve all departments in a business, as well as industrial ecologists and business managers. Policy makers—for example participating in decision-making processes on European Union research projects and demonstration plants—should be aware that practitioners with different professional backgrounds can have various perspectives on and preferences for allocation methods, and that this may influence the results of environmental and cost assessments significantly. This, in turn, affects the interpretations and decisions made by these practitioners and by the policy makers themselves. It is therefore recommended that, in biorefinery research and implementation, multidisciplinary and diverse views and knowledge are included in the assessment of both the environmental impacts and the costs—and, thus, also the reasonableness and feasibility—of such projects. Through interdisciplinary work and communication, urgently needed common allocation princi- ples for practitioners could be developed, thus allowing them to respond better to the current challenges. Supplementary Materials: The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https: //www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su14052619/s1; Figure S1: Weighting of criteria with respect to the allocation subject (cost allocation: n = 10, environmental impact allocation: n = 11) and byproduct (fines: n = 11, lignin: n = 10); Figure S2: Overall results ( n = 21) of the AHPs (final weights of the alternatives); survey on the topic of cost and environmental allocation in biorefinery processes. Author Contributions: J.W.: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, methodology, project administration, visualization, writing—original draft; S.P.: investigation, data curation; A.N.: con- ceptualization, supervision, writing—original draft; T.S.: conceptualization, funding acquisition, methodology, supervision, writing—original draft. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Funding: Open access funding was provided by University of Graz. Julia Wenger, Stefan Pichler and Tobias Stern received funding through the project FLIPPR2 (Future Lignin and Pulp Processing Research—PROCESS INTEGRATION; FFG project number: 861476), which is financially supported by the industrial partners Sappi Austria Produktions-GmbH & Co KG, Zellstoff Pöls AG and Mondi Frantschach GmbH, as well as the Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies (COMET), which are promoted by BMVIT, BMDW, Styria and Carinthia and managed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).
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